Cameraperson is so well-done. Getting to speak with the creator is inspiring and motivating. It made the film all the more meaningful and powerful because I was able to spend time with her enough to get a sense of her personality, how she talks to people, how she thinks. Her openness to questions, her ability to connect. I felt like we were her subjects and she was the camera. Her intimacy and carefulness to explain herself when answering questions, to go ‘off’ topic which somehow explained the question in a way that is indirect and makes you forget what you asked, but in a good way. She is an amazing teacher. I learned so much about filming from her workshop and her film. I learned so much about being human. The pains, emotions, anxieties, joys, appreciations, humbleness, I could go on. It never ended. A brilliant woman, a brilliant soul. I am forever indebted to her brilliance.
I had many questions about for KJ, and while many of them were answered by other students asking what I had in mind, there were others I was still curious about before we ran out of time. I wanted to know what kind of cameras she used and what kind of recorders her sound guy used. I very much see now how the equipment used is nowhere near as important as how good the cameraperson is, but it still would be interesting to know what technology this veteran documentarian prefers. I watched cameraperson on my computer at home a few days before the screening. During the screening I noticed the sound was much more intense. At first I thought it was just simply louder. I noticed the quality of sound especially when the shot of her twins were playing with her camera and you hear her son pat the microphone with his hands. The sound was very clear, but very low, bass-driven, and I am wondering how that was done. Was her camera’s microphone just that good? Was the sound from it cleaned up a bit? Was a new fabricated sound used in place of that?
It has been 4 days since the screening and all I can think about is her and her film! I keep thinking about how she wanted to do something that hasn’t been done before. She was successful in that as far as I know. She really has set the bar in terms of genre for the 21st century. I’m sure there will be college students all over the world playing off of Cameraperson for their capstones and senior seminars. She has inspired me to want to think out of the box and challenge certain parts of me that consider all her heavy experiences to be anxiety-ridden, hence things I thought I could never do.